BRUSSELS - Countries
in Africa and the Middle
East are a greater threat than old nuclear facilities in former
Soviet
republics as sources of material for a "dirty bomb," US
officials
say.

"In north Africa and
the Middle East you
have terrorist organisations, unstable governments, in some
cases actual civil
conflict and lack of control over sovereign territory. In the
former Soviet
Union we still have remaining challenges, but we are dealing
with relatively
stable governments with which we have a history of engagement,"
Simon
Limage, a non-proliferation specialist at the US state
department, told
EUobserver.

His colleague in the
US department of energy,
Anne Harrington, added: "All of these issues you could also
apply to
Pakistan."

She noted: "The risk
of using these things
[nuclear, chemical and biological materials] in a dirty bomb or
a radiological
dispersal device is of great concern to us."

Limage and
Harrington were in Brussels this week
to launch talks with EU countries on how to stop weapons of mass
destruction
[WMDs] being smuggled into Western allies, such as Jordan and
Turkey, or into
Europe and the US.

The dialogue comes
amid mounting evidence of use
of chemical weapons in Syria.

Harrington gave some
examples of past US
projects for the kind of work the US now wants to do with EU
states.

She said the US has
created a secure crossing
point on the Jordan-Syria border and has given it mobile
detection vans to help
control desert routes.

It has also beefed
up security at the Jordanian
port of Aqaba and trained Jordanian border officials.

"We teach them
things like: 'What does a
sealed radiological source look like? If you see one coming
through your
checkpoint, what do you do?'," Harrington explained.

She said the EU and
US will also share
knowledge.

"We know there are
well established
smuggling routes, for example from central Africa through Libya
to Europe. This
has been a route since the time of the caravans. The oases
haven't moved,"
she noted.

Limage said EU
states have better relations than
the US with some Middle East countries, mentioning Lebanon.

"We've had a hard
time building capacity
with Lebanon for various reasons, but it's in such a strategic
area that we
can't ignore its role," he said.

He noted the
importance of anti-American feeling
- linked to its support for Israel and to the 2003 Iraq war -
should not be
exaggerated, however.

"These feelings have
not prevented
co-operation on matters of national security for these
countries," he
said.